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23. - 30.08.2012 Trabzon - Eastern Anatolia - Iranian border
Olli:
After over two weeks of waiting for our bicycle parts in Trabzon we could finally move on. We felt a little rusty after all the lazyness, but we were so glad to be back in the saddle that we cycled more than 100 km along the coast the first day. But completely out of practice starting at full speed was not a good idea. As we turned inland again into the mountains, shortly before the Georgian border, Sonja suddenly had to struggle with increasing pain in her knee. Another evil were countless red and itchy pustules we were covered in on uncovered parts of the body and which should plague us for two weeks. We had received those from a voracious swarm of mosquitoes while we had been camping in a hazelnut orchard.
In the mountains near Artvin the road became so steep and Sonja's pain so strong that we decided to walk and push our bikes for a while. Suddenly, a Turkish car stopped in front of us and a likeable Austrian jumped out of it to take pictures of us and to welcome us. You can surely imagine that we were very surprised. In further conversation we found out that he, Sebastian, works in the area on the construction site of the world's third highest dam (Yusufeli Dam, over 271 m). He spontaneously invited us for an interesting private tour of the huge concrete monstrosity. I must admit that, because of my fear of heights, I could not look down. Sonja had to take pictures of the view. Special thanks to Sebastian for this great and educational tour.
Sonja:
Upon leaving us Sebastian warned us about countless dangerous tunnels lying ahead of us. So we turned on all the lights that we had and were certain that the warnings must have been a bit exaggerated. But that was not the case. The new, not quite finished tunnels were partially rather long and narrow, all of them not illuminated and the curb not passable yet. You get pretty queasy when you barely see your own hand in front of your eyes, while cars and trucks roar past you really tightly and you can only hope they see you in time. After a few of those black holes Olli suddenly had his first flat tire thanks to broken glass, which can be found all along the streets throughout Turkey, since everyone simply throws their empty bottles out of the car window. After patching it up we became very lucky as a Kurdish van driver, Yildirim, stopped and offered to take us 200 km to the next town, Erzurum. Happily we immediately jumped into the car and repeatedly congratulated each other on this decision during the ride, because over 30 tunnels lay ahead of us and after that quite a long dirt track. Also, my painful knee was very grateful.
After arriving in Erzurum (in winter a very popular ski resort with ski jumping) we went with Yildirim to the hotel of his friend, where we could spend 2 very low priced nights (we had to promise to make advertisement: Hotel Bahar - extremely cheap, simple, clean and with a nice atmosphere). He also offered to take us for another 200 km to Doğubeyazıt just before the Iranian border. We were thrilled with this great car service, since we gradually were quite fed up withTurkey after 2.5 months, but not with the country itself or its people, but especially with the terrible Turkish pop music that sounds like stepping on a cat's tail ;). In addition, we could not wait for finally arriving in Iran to explore a new and exciting country. The farther we advanced to Eastern Anatolia, the more we realized that the people there are not quite accustomed to European tourists, even less than the people of Central Anatolia, and that they express their surprise less restrained. We were openly ogled like aliens on shore leave on a regular basis and constantly addressed and invited to tea.
At the end of August, we finally set out to reach the Iranian border early in the morning together with the rising sun and passed the largest mountain in Turkey, the impressive Ararat. We were very excited and eager to see what's awaiting us in Iran, because you always hear a lot of bad press about this country but always positive things from other travelers. Just before the border we met the first Iranian cyclist on his touring bike and we learned that many Iranians, unlike the Turkish, like to cycle, and also longer distances with luggage, which let us hope for further encounters as such this.
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